IRONICALLY, IT MIGHT ONLY BE NOW that the 21st century is really beginning. But this comes after the death of the Millennial Left, which strived but failed to be true to what was new and different about the 21st century, instead falling back on rehearsing and repeating the 20th century, to which it remained beholden.
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THERE ARE TWO DISTINCT THEORIES of “Bonapartism”: one liberal; the other Marxist. The liberal theory of Bonapartism is about “strong-man rule” and focused on the character of the political leader; the Marxist theory is with respect to the role of the state in capitalism.
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“YOU HAVE TO make a choice right now. Red or blue. Whatever you think, you must be only one thing and choose only one thing. All that matters is making the choice. One always lies, and one always tells the truth. One always lies when telling the truth, and the other always tells the truth when lying. Good luck!”
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THE JAPANESE COMMUNIST PARTY (JCP), founded in 1922, is in its 103rd year in 2025. In 2023, the Party published the party history book 100 Years of the Japanese Communist Party to commemorate its centenary. However, it is a self-congratulatory book written by the JCP itself and does not analyze the history of the rise and fall of the Party in a social and class-based context.
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This article was originally published in Bahamas. It is based on the afterword to Jan-Georg Gerber’s Das letzte Gefecht: Die Linke im Kalten Krieg, as well as a talk he gave in January 2024 at the invitation of the Frankfurt Pro-Zionist Left. It has been translated into English by Platypus Affiliated Society member Tamas Vilaghy.
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